A Heart for Japan

One of my best friends is from Japan. She has friends in Toyoko as well as family in the "safer" area in the south of Japan. Because I know and love her, I am more compelled to pray and care for all the suffering and endangered Japanese right now.
I marvel in just the tiny bit I know about how God pre-planned for this "disaster" which doesn't diminish in any way the severity of the situation. Good friends of ours arrived in Japan just shortly before the earthquake hit. They had huge difficulty reaching their destination. They slept with 500 other people in an airport in Japan on the floor the other night. BUT God placed are two wonderfully gifted and caring Christians right there right this week to specifically care for the Japanese in their path.
My heart is touched for the Japanese people not because I saw the TV news and pictures or because I saw the newspaper. My heart is touched because I know and love my Japanese friend.
It's the relationships in life that move our hearts!
God is in the heart restoration business in my heart and He works heart restoration in all who come to Him by faith in His Son Jesus!

What we do in private deeply affects what happens in public. The man who is faithful to his wife while exercising bigotry toward his neighbor is no better than the adulterer who crusades for social justice. What God requires is morality with a capital M, both personal and social. God calls for an ethic that is consistent. No matter how you look at it, nobody can have their ethical cake and eat it, too... without getting moral indigestion.
-- Joni Eareckson Tada

It is a HEART MATTER! What we hide WILL start slithering out from our heart "secrets"! God calls us to live from pure hearts, and He's the only One who is able to work heart purity from the inside out. We just don't have it or "get it" on our own! We are broken and need God to work His eternal "FIX" in our hearts!

Peaceful Heart

Last night I couldn't sleep. O, I slept for awhile and then I'd wake. It was all because of stuff I was worrying about. I tried praying. I got up for awhile at 4 AM and read. I went back to bed and prayed again and finally slept for an hour or so.
The bottom line is that my worrying was the same problem Peter had. Peter wanted to walk on the water. He saw Jesus walking on the water, and he wanted to walk on the water too. Jesus told him to come ahead. Peter jumped out of the boat. BUT he ran into a problem. He was just fine as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus, but then he took his eyes off Jesus and started looking at the waves. That was a bad decision and choice! Then Peter started to sink.... He got scared and asked Jesus to help him.
That was me last night. I was concentrating on the "waves." Those darn "waves" were keeping me awake and then waking me up again. What I finally had to do was the same thing Peter did: I had to call out to Jesus to help me. I had to put my eyes back on Jesus and then my heart had peace. The "waves" are still there but my eyes are on Jesus. I'm leaving the "waves" to Him. He gives me heart peace as long as I keep my eyes on Him!

Nothing is harder to heal than a broken heart shattered by experiences that seem so meaningless. But God's people don't live on explanations; God's people live on His promises.
--Warren Wiersbe